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South Africa Wants Control of .za
fdiaz5583 writes "Recently, the South African government wants to seize control of the .za domain. However, ICANN owns the domains and under the ICANN rules, they will not relinquish control. Mike Lawrie who is global administrator of domain names states: 'If it becomes illegal for me to do the job under South African law and if I am not authorized by ICANN to hand over the administration, the .za domain will have to shut down until the issue is cleared up'." We mentioned this tussle earlier. The .za administrator doesn't like the way the government is going about this; the government, of course, has men with guns, so it's not like he's going to win in the end, it's only a question of how ugly it will get.
Who should, rightfully, get control of a country's top-level names? I have no doubt that Mr. Lawrie has done a good job, and for years with no pay at that, but he also isn't the one who built the infrastructure. I am not convinced that the government is always the best administrator, but why is looking to an undemocratic, unrepresentative corporation like ICANN any better?
I'm biased.
It seems lately I've developed a knee-jerk reaction to anything Microsoftian and/or coming from this two-bit^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H democratically elected leadership. When I see stupidity, I really dislike it. Unfortunately, it looks like it's on the rise.
To the world out there, I can only say a couple of things:
To the couple of South Africans who are reading this I just want to say:
That's it. Sit back and watch the show people, I can guarantee you will be entertained!
ICANN better get used to situations like this. Putting up an electronic embargo around a domain name should never be an option for ICANN. What are they going to do next, pull China's TLD because of human rights abuse?
/. job to tell another country what formal process to use in administering their TLD. I don't care what RFC exists that dictates this, it means nothing. Honestly, to the people involved in this who are so upset they were not consulted...blah..blah..blah: Get over yourselves.
First of, this is a democratically elected government with a formal bill making process, all of which has been followed. It's not ICANN or the readers of
This sort of political manuvering happens everyday in large corporations. Threatening to cause a blackout if the bill is passed only proves their point. I also have to say, I find it insane currently this has been done by one unpaid party with no formal/legal binding to the country. What if this Mike Lawerence guy was smacked by a bus? Who's his backup? Who knows what he knows?
And so they started their own redelgation process, but the DoC Sun Tzu'd them and came at them with the sun behind their back. Who cares, give it to the Gov't. It's theirs anyhow. They'll figure it out. If they spend 12million (whatever currency) on it, you have something to campaign with when you go for the Chairmens job. That's the way it works.
Stop acting like the dorky network administer who's pissed off his little department LAN has been absorbed by Corp IT, and he's no longer _GOD_.
I suspect these little quarrels between ICANN, South Africa, and other groups are harbingers of major DNS conflicts in the future. For example, what if Microsoft, instead of South Africa, demanded a particular TLD?
It's not a prospect anyone is looking forward to, but I think we should accept the fact that our system of TLDs and DNS hierarchy is going to fall apart. Our current system demands too high a level of political and economic consistency; eventually some large, politically powerful groups will break away and form their own system; or (perhaps more in line with current trends) the system will fall under the power of large corporations and people will break away and form their own roots.
So what needs to happen is the development of a system whereby multiple DNS roots can be easily used and DNS conflicts are resolved by the end-user rather than a commitee. It's unfortunate, but the Internet spans too many political and cultural boundaries for a "cathedral" model to be effective.
Okay, lets look at this in another light.
A country passes legislation that it's elected goverment should have control of its internet policy, and not a quasi-goverment 'board' of unelected officials.
Is it right for ICANN to mandate things upon an elected goverment? Is it right for an elected goverment to mandate things on ICANN?
These are issues that need to be adressed, this is just an issue of a goverment wanting to 'control the internet'. South africa do have a bad history of being controled by foreign commities after all.
I also find it mildly offensive that the Slashdot edditors automaticaly assosiate South Africa with Gun Toating Totalitarianism.
The more chaos the better.. one day piz.za will be mine.
Top level domains should obviously be controlled and administered by the government of the country they represent. The .za domain is the zone of an entire country. The name registrar is therefore a monopoly of services, and all monopolies should be regulated. The government should delegate management to a (private) organisation that is able to provide the quality services that are required. If that company does not provide the services, then the government should choose a different company.
Thats the same as the US government not having regulatory control over their own airwaves/airspace. Crazy.
---
The real beef is that governments are historically less speedy in providing the services required, but this should not prevent any government from having regulatory authority over the naming and addressing of the internet within its own borders.
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-Tim
A South African.
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I dont like the idea of potentially putting a company out of business because of governemental involvement, but some of the proposed regulatory changes will have to happen at some point in the future, in many places in the world.
Q?: Why should ICANN have a whip over the internet naming of an entire country? ICANN should recognise the regulations of govermental regulation of its namespace.
I think the admin should leave the country, a government this irrational is likely to blame him when they take over and find either that they've been unplugged from the root or that their attempts to do well meaning but wrong things will have the same effect.
Tech Public Policy stuff
ZA is the ISO 3166-1-alpha-2 designation for South Africa.
It is from the Dutch, Zuid Afrika
SA is Saudi Arabia
A: It's very simple :
1. The US army (= the governement) created Internet
2. They authorized universities to connect
3. They authorized people in the world to connect
4. They authorized commerce
5. They delegated THEIR rights to ICANN
That's it. Internet belongs to the US governement that *GAVE* its control to ICANN.
Countries have nothing to say like they have nothing to say about Ford Motors or about International Red Cross.
Now, is that good ? That's ANOTHER question...
The Price of Freedom is Eternal Vigilance.
DNS is merely a directory that applications consult. There is nothing cast in stone about ICANN's choices, or a government's. Only the users' settings matter. The user selects a server, and the server selects its root server(s). It's a hierarchy of trust up to "."
.com, .org, and other TLDs too. The problem is that most end users don't know how to choose anything but what their ISP tells them. And there has been no reason to "fork the root" yet. A few non-ICANN domains exist, but they're not widely accepted yet.
So if the South African government and ICANN don't agree, then each DNS administrator (at least for the main root nodes that others consider authoritative) around the world, or for that matter each non-root DNS server operator who knows how, can select whichever ".za" TLD server they prefer. The government can run one, and the incumbent can run one. Frankly, it is more important what John Sidgemore thinks, because he runs the largest backbone ISP. ICANN exists because Bernie Ebbers before, and John now, let it. My guess is that ICANN would not advise the server operators to obey a government over itself. Operators within South Africa might have to, but the rest of the world is not subject to that jurisdiction.
Likewise, if users don't like ICANN, they can move to a different DNS for
Why should the government or indeed anyone in South Africa claim right to a convention that is used by the entire world to simply refer to them?
.za belongs to every single entity on the internet (using the current domain name system) because it is there to serve us as a reference to South Africa.
.za'. Is this actually an issue?
.za should not belong to South Africa because it refers to them,
I think if myself and the other residents on my street joined together and tried to seize control of our postal code (after all, it is how people send stuff to our street) we would be laughed at because it makes no sense.
Now I realise that puchasing of domain names has lead to a way of thinking that domain names belong to their owners, and therefor who better to own a country wide domain name than a body in that country, but I feel that is a misconception.
A more correct term for purchasing domain names is registering domain names (which can involve the transfer of money) which actualy implies the assignment of rights rather than the assignment of ownership. You get the exclusive right to have that name point at you, but it is never owned because it is just a name, and it belongs to the people using it to refer to you as much as anyone else.
Now what would help people (myself included) understand the situation better is an explaination of what you can actually do once you have 'seized control of
Please would someone care to explain the implications of such a situation. If it has all sorts of potential implications on how the internet or other global systems could pan out then it would be of great interest if these were explored in detail, otherwise who has control of a domain name seems rather irrelevant news.
"Don't nations worldwide have control over how their physical locations are addressed?"
So you figure that the SA government should be able to regulate how US map publishers spell SA place names? A German publisher of industrial indexes should have to get permission from the SA government to list the phone numbers of SA businesses?
Hint: the root servers are not in South Africa.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
It's not like all the possible extensions are used up. If an island with a few hundred people can have its own TLD, why not let South Africa be associated with two, the current .za for people who don't want to go through a corrupt government monopoly, and something appropriate for those who want to show pride in their government by using a domain it controls?
That said, if this dispute can be used to help destroy ICANN, that should be encouraged.
___
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
Just to inform all those misinformed people. South Africa is predominatly encompassed by people of the white pigment not black. But if you insist on calling someone black a "nigger" you can take your comments to www.kkk.com or some place that deals with derogitory, spiteful comments. I have always believed slashdot to be openminded and I still believe it to be. So before you go off ranting about "nigger control" and other racists remarks dealing with a government and country that is mostly white, do a little research so you don't look uneducated. I do not accept racists and I would like to believe that most of the slashdot community does not accept them either.
.uk. However, I believe some legislation needs to be done in the ICANN in order to keep things under control so one government does not get bent-out-of-shape because they lack control of what is thought to be, in essence but not in actuality, theirs.
Now for the topic at hand. I would like to believe that if a country has a direct relation to a domain name that they would be in control of it. Similar to
The internet is supposed to be a free community and strong arm tactics from anyside should not be tolerated.
What do other people think?
~Char Lander
Brothers and sisters I have none, but this mans father is my fathers son
HINT: the ZA administration is.
A goverment disided how a business inside its boarders will do a job. That is it.
It is not ICCAN'TS to deside what they like. They are a business too. The ZA authority has been moved to a goverment oversite, from a person on his own. It is done.
If ICCAN'TS can't understand that - then either the internet is dead or ICAN'T is.
jackb
It's a wide area network. Possesion is a rather meaningless concept to apply to it. Whoever owns the root servers has a great deal of possible control, which is a term that ofen equates to possesion. That control can only be excercised when you are the only game in town. But anyone can set up their own network. In fact, just about everybody does.
Despite that, the real reason America has so much say and will continue to have so much say, is that everyone wants to surf American web-sites. There is no one out there to set up a viable competing internet.
If South Africa had invented the internet, instead of our recent ex-Vice-President, America's response would have been to set up our own competing version called MicroNetSoft and muscle South Africa out of their niche. Americans wouldn't have been able to surf South African websites, but not many people would have cared. America would have suceeded too.
South Africa does not have the same option.
(I know what Gore's actual comment was, please don't quote it back to me.)
This all smacks of the way shortwave frequencies are allocated. Lots of rules that most countries think they can ignore whenever it suits them. The internet is certainly as international a phenomenon as shortwave radio and should be administered internationally, not by local governments who think their concerns trump those of everybody else.
Hic iacet Arthurus, rex quondam rexque futurus.
Who gave ICANN the say so over this? The South African government wanting control over the .za domain seems to me to be less of an issue than ICANN wanting control over the . zone.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
Anyone who wants to manage an internet namespace (.ZA in this case) has three choices. (1) Overthrow ICANN, (1) Work within ICANN's rules, or (3) Ignore ICANN.
.ZA administrator would be happy to unload this unpaid job he's doing. Heck, buy it from him for $1.
.ZA does not exist outside South Africa's physical borders.
South Africa's mistake is that they chose option 3, and I will explain.
Option 1, overthrowing ICANN is an interesting option (good? bad? I dunno). This is clearly NOT South Africa's intent however.
Option 2, Working within ICANN's rules would have saved everyone a big headache. The current
So, what's wrong with Option 3? A web site is useless unless people can find its IP address. The only way to find the IP address is to look it up in the list published by the official domain administrator. To find this list they ask their LOCAL ISP (probably NOT in South Africa). If the South African government "seizes" control - publishes it's own list and preventing the current administrator from publishing a list, then the "official list" vanishes".
It would then be up to individual LOCAL ISP's to take it upon themselves to use the unofficial South African government list, or to follow the rules and answer "UNKNOWN".
The internet works on COOPERATION. Without it
-
- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
"But shouldn't the GOVERNMENT of South Africa decide who controls the .za domain..."
They can do whatever the hell they want inside SA, but why should they have any say over what goes into databases located in other countries?
"If they cannot perform their functions in a less confrontational manner, perhaps its time we handed control back to where it used to be."
Right. Let's give it back to the US DoD.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
The internet does *not* belong to the US government. You can say it many times but it doesn't make it true.
The US government does not own even a controlling interest in the infrastructure. The US government does not own the root nameservers.
At one point the US millitary owned the internet, as soon as they allowed others to connect at will they gave it up. The US does not own the networks of those they allowed to connect, nor does it own the networks who connect to the networks they allowed to connect, at nauseum.
The internet is owned by humanity. The namespace for a country should belong to that country for without that country why have the namespace?
-- iCEBaLM
I guess this just proves once more that when it comes to internet law and politics one's assumptions about the obvious are rarely correct.
First of all, control of the 'internet' has zero to do with control of namespaces. Let's say, for example, that all of a sudden, my domain, 'neverending.org' became suddenly popular, and everyone wanted a third-level domain under it. So, to help the situation, I divy up the namespace into country-codes, so there is us.neverending.org, ca.neverending.org, za.neverending.org, and so on. Now why in the world should I be forced to let the South African government control za.neverending.org?
ICANN owns/runs very top level namespace. It created it. Why should it be told what to do by a foreign government? Artificial namespaces, such as the domain namespaces, aren't owned by humanity, they are owned by whoever created them.
After some further reading, it seems that IANA's policy is to only issue TLDs for countries listed in the ISO 3166 country list, so a new TLD would not be allowed.
.JP, .CA, and .AU.
On the same page, you can also see some other applications for redelegation such as
It's pretty obvious that the South African government is incompetent in this matter. Next thing you know they'll be running their social security DB off of Microsoft .NET Passport!
Then that's their business. As long as they don't break the rest of the DNS system, the country's government should be given full control of the country's domain name. The software they choose to use, and the consequences of doing so, should be entirely up to them. To do otherwise undermines the whole idea of ccTLDs.
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
Whoever owns the root name servers should control the delegation of all the top-level domains. Period.
Yes, and they should delegate ccTLDs to the appropriate entities as determined by the current government of the country to which the TLD has been assigned. Period.
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
ICANN own the root nameservers. The ccTLDs are the main (only) big organistations currently telling ICANN to get fucked. I'm guessing ICANN are spoiling for a showdown with one or two, so they can slap the rest into line.
To dispell a few myths(at the risk of being called redundant but it seems necessary given the level of knowledge here about places not big in the news): South Africa has a white minority of some 6 million people in a country of about 42 million, the rest being mostly black of various tribes, with about 3 million of mixed race and about 1 million asians. It's pretty varied culturally and worth a visit. It was ruled by the white minority for most of it'S political history and started changing after 1989 with the ending of racialy biased laws. It had it's first truly democratic elections in 1994 which the current government, the ANC won.
.za domain seems to be one of those things. Basically it seems as if they are trying to make the admin of the TLD *and* registrations more available to the majority of the population which is very poor and has no internet access. While I applaud this, I think they're going about it in the wrong manner and at the wrong place. Having control of the TLD isn't going to give anybody DSL or even Dial-Up overnight and even if they had the access, they still wouldn't have the computers. My guess is that this is going to end up in a bureaucratic, corrupt mess that some other government will have to sort out in the future. But you never know.
It has had a lot of ups and downs and has a horrific crime rate and a lot of problems, but, in general, it has done a lot better than many whites predicted(myself included). It has won a major legal struggle against international drug companies in it's efforts to legally produce cheap , generic anti-AIDS drugs.
One of it's unsolved problems is that the government is new in historical terms and tends to do things in ridiculously bureaucratic ways. This messing with the
I used to have one. My mother has one. etc. But guns have very little to do with TLD administration in case you didn't notice.
Typical American idiot who has no idea of what he's talking about and even less of an idea of how to spell it: It's "De Klerk" and "Apartheid". And the nationalist NP weren't disposed of by anybody. They gave up power of their own free will, and lost the first truly democratic election. Further, everyone had guns in South Africa and still do: I had one and all my friends had guns. The crime in South Africa has nothing to do with the availability of guns and everything to do with generations of very poor people suddenly not being oppressed by a very viscious police force where tortue and state sanctioned murder was common.
I wish I was the global administrator of some stuff!
Nobody could be as 1337 as me, if I was a global administrator of something. I could tell my boss to suck it.
Skiers and Riders -- http://www.snowjournal.com
Nigger
Pronunciation: 'ni-g&r
Function: noun
1a: one that nigs b: a tool or machine for nigging.
Common. Lets all grow up now. After all, when was the last time you saw somebody nig?
You need a FREE iPod Nano
How ignorant can you get? Anybody else care to correct Cpt. Hick, because I'm too busy laughing at his oh-so-complete grasp of South African society and politics...
"Yep. Dem darr niggers got themselfs a domain boys! What you think we should doo bout dem?"
"Ping em high!!"
Sigh.
You need a FREE iPod Nano
Provision of names in .za isn't a service such as education or healthcare that a country provides to its citizens; it's merely one part of the vast decentralised database called the DNS. There's nothing "obvious" in saying that any one part of the DNS should be controlled by anyone in particular, other than that it should be controlled by someone competent to do the job (and, by all accounts, the ability to run nameservers competently is not universally believed to be a property of the South African government).
It's difficult to better the way Jon Postel put it in the relevant standards document, RFC 1591 ("Domain Name System Structure and Delegation"), sec 3.2: "These designated authorities are trustees for the delegated domain, and have a duty to serve the community. The designated manager is the trustee of the top-level domain for both the nation, in the case of a country code, and the global Internet community. Concerns about "rights" and "ownership" of domains are inappropriate. It is appropriate to be concerned about "responsibilities" and "service" to the community." (emphasis mine).
GROGGS: alive and well and living in
Firstly, The .za debate is still ongoing, there's a lot that will happen still and hopefully common sense will prevail.
Secondly, I'm frankly not amazed at the kind of total troll bait that's filled up this topic, but what I am shocked about is some white South Africans attitude toward thier country.
The whole attitude of 'everything has gone to shit in the last 10 years'
Well, leave the country then - we don't need your negativity or short-sightedness.
Fact: everything was shit for 80% of the population for 100 years !
Fact: our new government now has to build an infrastructure to support 40 million people as opposed to 3 million 'privileged' whites and you expect it to happen overnight ?
Fact: There was no 'bloody revolution' and as a white South African, you have your patient fellow black South Africans to thank for that - give that some thought.
Yes, we have wide-scale corruption, crime, rape and numerous other problems - we have to fix that somehow. Name me a country without similar problems !
Yes, government is messing up badly on many issues, but heck, at least most people have a fighting chance to succeed these days.
Get over the fact that your a white South African and become just 'a South African' and for gods sake, help make the country work instead of publically degrading it at every opportunity !
We, as South Africa, are, like it not, a roll model for the rest of Africa - if we mess up badly, Africa stays in the dark ages for another 50 years.
As a white South African remember one thing, your living in AFRICA - wake up, this is not 'the colonies' anymore.
A slashdotting - you get the stick first and then the carrot !
Okay, all the "right way/wrong way" and political stuff aside, I don't understand one thing:
How does the control over who maintains the domain list affect anyones ability to access the Internet? I'm reading the article as saying that by South Africa maintaining the TLD itself, more people will have better access to the Internet.
Is this change suddelly going to put more computers or network connections in to remote/poor sections of the country?
Article X: The powers not delegated... by the Constitution...are reserved...to the people
I think I'm the only white South African to have openly posted here and fail to see what was was so racist about my post. A lot of Americans were talking about "Niggers" etc but I didn't see the usual crowd of embittered ex-Rhodesians drop in.
So I would point you to my post "I'm a South African" and ask you to read it again.
Further I should tell you that I think you are exhibiting exactly the problem that is rife in the government: Any criticism and and they start screaming "racists". Amazing how that helps them avoid the onus of having to be accountable for their actions doesn't it?
Damn, and I thought that the Fundie Christians had poor critical thinking skills. This takes the cake. Someone get a little upset at tax time, while driving on government paid for roads, and using the government funded Internet? Not to mention being reasonably secure in your possesions and life compared to the rampant crime in SA, where apparently the Government does keep out of the law enforcement business.
You can only drink 30 or 40 glasses of beer a day, no matter how rich you are.
-- Colonel Adolphus Busch
As a South African, I find the following quote from the article most distasteful:
"...the government, of course, has men with guns, so it's not like he's going to win in the end, it's only a question of how ugly it will get."
We have the rule of law,you know, and an excelent constitution. I trust our constitution to protect my rights. More so than in most "first world" countries.
This argument will certainly not be settled by men with guns, but most likeley in the South African Constitutional Court.
The goverment has been challenged on constitutional grounds before, and have in many cases lost. And the beautiful thing is, the decision of the Constitutional court is respected, and upheld.
You know it's kind of tragic We live in the new world But we've lost the magic -- Battery 9 (www.battery9.co.za)
The South African government can declare the name theirs, oust the admin and all that. Then, ICANN can tell the root servers to stop accepting updates from them. The .za domain will the effectively cease to exist to the world. Only DNS admins that specifically add the SA servers to their list of roots will see it.
.sycraft TLD, only people that added my server to their root list (or used it directly) would ever see it.
.za domain if they like, but root servers can refuse to accept updates from them. All the roots except for I and K are located in the US (I is in Stockholm, K is in London). Now since ICANN runs the roots, they make the rules.
The DNS system, and most of the Internet is all about cooperation and following established rules. Noone is forcing yuo, but if you don't you just won't work with anyone else. It's like IP addresses, those are handed out by ARIN, RIPE and the other organisations like them. Well you are free to ignore them if you want. You can program your network equipment to use whatever IP addresses you like, even ones you don't own. However, your upstream provider will refuse to route your traffic if you do. You can run your own little network however you please with whatever addressess you like, but if you want to play on the Internet, you have to use the ones given to you or your traffic won't go anywhere.
It's the same thing with DNS. I run a DNS server and I can do anything I want with it. I can add domain names to it that someone else owns, nothing is stopping me. However, only people that use that DNS server will see my mapping. Everyone else will see the correct mapping. I can also tell it what root servers I want it to search. I am free to add the root servers from an alternate TLD orginisation (there are a couple out there) or even remove the root-servers.net servers entirely. If I wanted, I could even setup a root with my own TLDs. However, this all just affects people that trust and use my DNS. If I were to create a root and add the
So the situation is the same with South Africa. Sure, they "take control" of the
Again, if you don't like the roots, you can move to or create an alternate root authority. Noone is stopping you, however most of us only take the ICANN controled roots as authorative, so we will never see your DNS updates. That's how freedom on the internet works. You are free to ignore the established rules and protocols, and noone will arrest you or anything. However the rest of us are then free to ignore you and your method of doing things.
Sorry but the UK government does not have control of .uk. That is controlled by a non-profit organisation called Nominet, set up originally by Demon Internet (one of the first UK ISPs). And a very good job they do too. As I mentioned in an earlier post, excellent service for only $3.65/year per domain.
Phillip.
PS Not smart playing into the racists hands. The only time I saw the 'n' word was in *your* post because you put it in a +2 post (presumably the post you are replying got modded down out of view, as you should have expected it would have been)
PPS South Africa is not "predominatly encompassed by people of the white pigment not black", as "Black South Africans make up about 70 percent of the country's population of over 44 million people" (ref).
Property for sale in Nice, France
The ccTLDs were an agreement between representatives of various countries and ICANN, in order to split the root namespace according to country, and allow each country a namespace to administer independant of ICANN.
If the .za ccTLD was administered by someone whose dispute resolution policy was "if it has money, it wins", you would be singing a very different tune.
The point is that no one person or organisation has the right or authority to assume control of a ccTLD, where a representative authority exists and is capable of doing the same thing. That authority is the government.
i-name =twylite [http://public.xdi.org/=twylite], see idcommons.net
And do you think ICANN would be so stupid to do that? I hope they do so we can finally get rid of ICANN once and for all.
All country code TLDs should be under the control of the specific country identified. That seems to be the case with many, and maybe most. I think that the government of South Africa has the right to designate who (be it a government department, a corporation, or even an individual) runs the zone, and even specify the policies under which it operates. The fact that some governments already do have that control just makes the case all that much stronger.
What makes you say that any one name space is the correct one? How do you define correct? Is it correct if it's what you think is right? Is it correct just because ICANN runs it?
Been there, done that.
My real point is, however, that if it comes down to two different sources of .za TLD zone data, people will demand to use the officially government sanctioned source, as opposed to the one that the current operator runs. If ICANN fails to use the government one, I predict it will be the final stake through the heart of an organization that should have been terminated years ago.
And yes, I will put the South African government sanctioned .za zone delegation in my root zone as soon as they set one up.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
If this is true, then it does grant some validity to the notion that the country pointed to should be in control of said namespace, but it doesn't convince me fully yet.
No I wouldn't, since I know full well that if I didn't like how ICANN was handling its root nameservers, then I could switch to a different root.
There are those who say that because AIDS is so dangerous it is irresponsible for people to raise doubts around it, but I would argue that it is essential for people to question such things precisely because it is so dangerous.
A good source of information on the opinion that HIV does not necessarily cause AIDS can be found here.